Why the SONIC in the "Sonic the Hedgehog" is weird?

source: YouTube

What is the Uncanny valley?

It is when a computer-generated character or a robot designed to look alike a human but there are not enough details to perceive our brain to believe that this is a real human, so we will feel uneasy looking at the character because our brain can’t differentiate between whether this character is human or CGI.

Why can't we directly point out the problem with the CGI even though we have this weird uneasy feeling about them?

The human brain is so powerful in processing details and well adapted to analyze the smallest details in a human face whenever it sees one through its visual input (eyes). When a baby born to this world he or she first sees the face of his mother since that moment the brain of that baby starts analyzing the details of a human face. When we become old enough to watch a movie, our brains are already filled with thousands of real human faces data so whenever our brain registers a new face through his eyes it's gonna check it with the database to clarify whether it's real or not.

Look at this robot designed to look like human but because of the uncanny valley, it is weird and uneasy.    Source: Creepy girl

All these processing happens inside our brain unconsciously to us and will only feel the effect uneasiness, not the method nor the direct issue for the problem. Sometime you may never realize the problem of the character unless you are keenly looking at it and manually analyze it for faults.

Does this affect the success of the product (movie in our case)?

Let's say you have a human-like housekeeping robot (possible in the near future) in your house and it gives this crazy uneasiness feeling for you when you take a look at them, would you keep it for yourself?

source: cnet.com

The answer will be Not for a long right?

But in the movie industry CGI characters plays a different role, sometimes the effect of this uncanny valley is very obvious and other times it won't be that much of an issue. When the main character of the movie is a CGI like in the Ex Machina you have to make it perfect because most of the screen time goes to CGI character so the viewers will be looking at the CGI character for a long period of time. So the VFX artists have to perfect the subtle movements of the CGI body as well as the features of the face.

Our brain will always look for subtle details like a movement of lips, movement of eyes, pores of the skin when we smile or frown and the light scattering through the years when it exposed to bright light and the list goes on and on that's why it's harder to replicate the human features in CGI body.

Remember our brain can analyze all these things in milliseconds that's why it's the most powerful processor in the world.

Uncanny Valley in CGI

VFX  (visual effects) artist's dream is to create a human-like CGI that will fool the audience to the point that they are gonna think that it is a real human, so they won't hesitate to push the boundaries of  CGI to achieve that level.

Some of the biggest franchisers invest loads of money to their VFX like Marvel and DC, so those movies turn up to be very good. But sometimes because of their release schedule VFX teams get a short amount of time to complete their work and completed the movie, so this can lead to the cause of imperfection.

Is the technology is not yet there for perfect human-like CGI?

When it comes to robot technology I personally think the technology is not yet there to mimic real-time human face in the real world because it's quite impossible to do since the material and the technology is not there to do that perfectly.

When it comes to CGI it is possible since all the work is done through the Softwares and they are more than advanced to create perfect human-like CGIs. All the best artists out there use them for outstanding work in the industry.

What happened in the "The Sonic the Hedgehog"?

Sonic is an iconic cartoon character produced in 1993 and after the huge success of the Sonic cartoon SEGA, Nintendo and a lot of other companies launched its own version of Sonic video games. some of them like Sonic Mania Plus by SEGA became so popular among video game players. For years Sonic character has been established in our brain as a cartoon and the character itself has the abilities far from a normal hedgehog or a human so our brain is trained to believe that Sonic is a cartoon.


When Paramount Pictures released the trailer in April 2019 for the first time they got nasty and outrageous complaints from the crowd about the design of the Sonic character and people start making memes about the movie, some were saying it was overdone and some were saying the original look of the sonic is missing. Within a few days after the release, the social outrage to the movie was overwhelming so the Paramount Pictures decided to acknowledge the problem and they postponed the release date of the movie by 9 months went back to the studio to readjust the Sonic.
The movie came back strong with some appealing changes to the sonic and the movie was a success.

• Some of the readjustment they did for Sonic is mentioned in the below picture (picture in the Left - Before, Right - After)

   Thank You!!!